The Movie of the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (Impressions/Reviews)

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So how do you have a closed time loop without fixed time? If time isn't fixed, then future events are caused by present or past events. In other words, for something in the the future to occur, it MUST be preceded by something in the past. However, a true closed loop would require simultaneity. If a bike wheel spins, the top part of it goes down at exactly the same time and rate as the bottom part goes up. It's fixed. Neither motion causes the other; they're intertwined as part of a single structure.

Let's go back to the stable time loop we first mentioned and simplify it. Information is sent into the past. At some point a person finds that information and proceeds to send it back into the past, closing the loop. I don't see where simultaneity comes into it, but I also don't see where events aren't caused by preceding events. When the person finds the information, it's because it was sent into his (however recent) past. When that information is sent back into the past, it is done so after the person found it. The only hiccup in the argument is the information appearing in the past being caused by an event in the future, but you'd have to nullify the very possibility of travelling into the past if you can't get past that. And more importantly, to the perception of the info, the time at which it was sent is in the past of when it arrived, however short the perceived interval between the two may be.

"Time loop" doesn't describe time itself looping, only the particular timeline(s) of the thing(s) sent back. And even then it's only a loop to an outside observer. To itself, it's as straight a line as ever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

You say that the existence of a future doesn't invalidate someone's choices; I disagree. If there is only one action a person will EVER take in a given situation (which would be the only way to have a static future), then they don't have a choice. You're right, there would be no point in preventing Mikuru from slipping up, but the time travelers will do it anyway. They can never do anything else.

If I hand you a complete map and say, "You can name this city whatever you want, as long as it's Atlanta," you really don't have a choice, do you? The fact that the map exists precludes your having any freedom in your decision.

And you're missing the argument. It's not free will versus predetermination, it's intent versus results. If I intend to jump up into the sky and fly away, my free will isn't impinged if it is impossible for that result to occur. If I intend to jump off the side of a building to my death, my free will is not impinged if I land in a canopy 10 feet from the pavement and walk away without injury. If I turn right at a stop light, what difference to my free will does it make if you knew beforehand that I was going to do it? Your map argument is incorrect. In order to compare to real predetermination for most fictional individuals, they can't see the name on the map. When they choose "Atlanta", they chose it. Whether you knew they would or not has no say on their ability to make the choice.

That's why VCV mentioned the time travelers, as the distinction is less clear regarding them. They know they can't fly. They know whether they'll hit the ground when they jump off the building. They know beforehand that they'll be turning right at the stop sign. Unlike anyone else, they see your map. But even they still have their free will. They can still say "Houston" when presented with your map. Doesn't mean they will. Doesn't mean the name will change if they do, but even if it'll cause the universe to implode, they can still say it, or more importantly, can choose to say it.

But even that limitation breaks down when we're confronted with Mikuru (at least the small version). They sent her back with only the bare necessities of knowledge for a reason. She hasn't seen the map (or at least it's too blurry to make out the names). There's no argument that she does have her free will, whether or not her actions are all predetermined.

EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

Well, we lose the internal consistency when Kyon goes back in time to stop Yuki and succeeds, especially if you've already agreed to play by the rules that have been set down earlier (allowing the existence of closed loops and such). Kyon from the alternate universe prevented Yuki from creating that alternate universe, and we have the grandfather paradox.

Who's to say he prevented her from creating the Yukiverse? We never see what happened to it "afterwards", as the Ryoko stabby incident is resolved before our first view of the Yukiverse (when Kyon woke up later that morning), and injured!Kyon wakes up in a hospital room at a time after the point when he invoked the Escape Program. Every moment between waking up that morning and starting the Escape Program is between those two moments, and we never see that time again. They may very well have occurred just like we saw originally. But even if they didn't, Haruhi's power was invoked, so all bets are off.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamer_2k4

Then I see no way that you can make that allowance. While it's not impossible to exist prior to your birth, it IS impossible to influence that birth in any way. Completely throwing away the genetic issues that would make fathering yourself a statistical impossibility (have you ever seen someone with a kid or grandkid EXACTLY like them?), the influence of your existence in the past, especially as far as family goes, would alter conditions too much for the time travel to be consistent. If it truly was a closed loop, then we have all the problems I listed above with such things.

You misunderstand the argument. You say it would alter conditions, but alter them from what, exactly? A time "before" he was his own grandfather? There's no such thing. There is no altering, because things play out they way they always did. Our hypothetical grandson didn't "become" his own grandfather at some point after going back in time, he always was his own grandfather.

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Last edited by quigonkenny; 2010-08-05 at 01:15.
Reason: to respond to things added as my response was being written

Isn't time something that doesn't really exist, except as an attempt by us to make an unit of measurement? What with time dilation and stuff when you move at near-lightspeed. Time was never a constant in the first place anyway.

Concerning time loops:
Imagine this situation. I have a Nerf gun that shoots a single dart at a time. Every time I shoot a dart, some guy picks up that dart and hands it back to me. This works as long as one of us starts with the dart, of course. But he can't give me the dart unless I shoot it at him, and I can't shoot it at him unless he gives it to me. Where does the dart come from? The loop doesn't work unless one of us can get the dart without the influence of the other, and if we can do that, it's not a loop at all.

Concerning free will:
If the argument is intent versus results, what determines intent? If you're guaranteed to have a particular intent in a given situation, how can you still say a person has free will? If you intend to jump off a building, then it's safe to assume that your life up to that point has been steadily guiding you toward that intent. I would argue that given the exact same circumstances and history in a completely different universe, you would have the same intent.

Ithekro cited Endless Eight as an example of different results despite having the exact same situation, but I'd argue that that's not the case. The repetitions are sequential, and each time one occurs, it has trace amounts of information from the previous loops injected into it. Had it not been for that, they would've gone through the same loop (probably loop #2) indefinitely.

At any rate, if you don't have control over your intent (and I'd argue that you don't), then you don't have the free will that intent would offer.

Concerning the Yukiverse:
I THINK that Yuki does get shot with the gun in a later book. But lets say she doesn't. When exactly was Haruhi's power invoked? The instant Yuki altered the world, Haruhi lost all her power. And even if she didn't, I don't remember a single instance in the movie where Haruhi was actually responsible for anything out of the ordinary. Am I wrong?

Additionally, remember that the Yukiverse is an alternate reality, not a parallel one. As long as it exists, the original world cannot, and vice versa. Furthermore, there's no way to have one reality "follow" the other. The fact that the real world exists means it existed for the three days (or whatever it was) between Yuki changing things and the time that we see. When Kyon "left" the Yukiverse, he was just going to a point in time before it existed. There's no reason to believe it suddenly stopped existing once he activated the reset program.

The universe is governed by cause and effect. For something to happen, something must precede it. Think of it as weaving a tapestry. You start with nothing and you add to it, building on what you have before. Every weave you make influences the next weave you'll make. It's very possible to go back and change something you did before, but that will force you to recreate everything you've made after that point.

Now, we can assume that all of time is built until the very end of the universe. We'll still have that fixed timeline that we've assumed earlier, and time travel is still possible. However, here is the crucial, crucial issue: The fact is that history is built first and foremost on the cause and effect model that we know governs the universe. This precludes closed loops, despite the fact that they admittedly do have working causality once they're established. Why is this? It's simply because closed loops require a retroactive causality. They require the assumption that time itself is constructed externally and arbitrarily, and as long as that construction ultimately follows the rules of causality, everything is alright.

So, I guess it comes down to this: Is the universe built on rules, or did it merely happen to fall in place in such a way that rules exist?

Concerning time not existing:
Events cause other events, and this happens in a discernible progression. Whether or not that progression occurs at a constant rate has no bearing on the fact that it does, in fact, happen. We call that happening Time.

Only true if you can't time travel. The order of events only have relevance when everything can flow only in one way. Thus the rule is broken as soon as a time machine come into being.

Quote:

The universe is governed by cause and effect.

What determines which is the cause and which is the effect? The one that happened first in the timeline. But with time travel, when something happened no longer mattered.

Your rules only apply without a time machine. Trying to force time travel into the same rules simply don't work. It would be like saying it is impossible to sail around the world in one week, then use that as proof that you can't FLY around the world in one week.

Quote:

So, I guess it comes down to this: Is the universe built on rules, or did it merely happen to fall in place in such a way that rules exist?

The universe is what it is. That's all. Rules are just what we humans made up to explain and predict things, but in the end the priority is the observed data. If we see something that breaks the rules, then the rules are wrong and had to be changed. We don't change the universe to suit the rules, that would be unscientific.
(Unless you are Haruhi)

To put it simply; the rules don't make the universe, the universe make the rules.

Only true if you can't time travel. The order of events only have relevance when everything can flow only in one way. Thus the rule is broken as soon as a time machine come into being.

The rule is not broken; it's reversed. There's a huge difference, which I'll get into in the next paragraph.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

What determines which is the cause and which is the effect? The one that happened first in the timeline. But with time travel, when something happened no longer mattered.

Consider this. I throw a baseball through a window. The window shatters, the baseball is slowed slightly, and the baseball and glass all fall to the ground. That's all cause and effect. Now let's say the same thing happens as we go back in time. The baseball launches itself into the air, pulls all the glass together, and lands in your hand, forcing a reverse windup of your arm. Energy is transferred the opposite way and entropy is decreased. I suppose that's legitimate if you don't think too deeply about how the ball started moving. However, the baseball still follows all the rules that were in effect before, only in the wrong order. Instead of cause and effect, you have effect and cause, but the relationship still exists.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Your rules only apply without a time machine. Trying to force time travel into the same rules simply don't work. It would be like saying it is impossible to sail around the world in one week, then use that as proof that you can't FLY around the world in one week.

Except time travel DOES follow those rules by default. You either go forward or backward, and all the relationships between events and objects remain the same. Time is one-dimensional, and as such, the rules governing it are absurdly simple. But you're trying to have your cake and eat it too; you're trying in one breath to convince me that closed loops follow the rules and in the next to say that the rules are irrelevant. Rules either exist or they don't; there's either rigidity or absurdity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

The universe is what it is. That's all. Rules are just what we humans made up to explain and predict things, but in the end the priority is the observed data. If we see something that breaks the rules, then the rules are wrong and had to be changed. We don't change the universe to suit the rules, that would be unscientific.

Uh, except that's exactly what you're doing. You're saying, "Yes, I know that we have all the rules, but to heck with them! In this made-up case, they don't apply!" You say the rules don't fit time travel; I say time travel doesn't fit the rules. And when we have no reason to believe that the rules should be changed other than "some guy wrote about it this way and boy wouldn't it be cool if it worked," that's not a legitimate reason to say the rules don't apply. If a description of ANY situation doesn't fit the understood rules, then the correct response is to assume the description is false.

Yes, it's fiction, and yes, fiction can have its own rules. If I were to argue against the magic in Harry Potter on rational terms, you'd tell me to give it a rest because it's all made up, and you'd be right. But here, the argument is not, "it's a story so don't worry about it;" it's "yes it's a story but it could actually happen that way!" That's where I draw the line.

Uh, except that's exactly what you're doing. You're saying, "Yes, I know that we have all the rules, but to heck with them! In this made-up case, they don't apply!" You say the rules don't fit time travel; I say time travel doesn't fit the rules. And when we have no reason to believe that the rules should be changed other than "some guy wrote about it this way and boy wouldn't it be cool if it worked," that's not a legitimate reason to say the rules don't apply. If a description of ANY situation doesn't fit the understood rules, then the correct response is to assume the description is false.

"Rules" are simply what we humans created for convenience. Even the laws of nature are simply what we wrote ourselves by observing and deducting. As an example, if we found something that can travel faster than light, then we have to abandon the rule that Light speed is the speed limit of the universe. The same way we abandoned the idea that Earth is flat.

You are putting the cart ahead of the horse; that is exactly why I bring up the point. When Yuki's people saw Haruhi being able to create new data when no one else could, they didn't think "that's impossible!" and just assume it can't happen. They re-evaluate what could be possible and determined that new rules are needed.

That's is how we get new rules. Theory of gravity, Theory of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics. When you see something in the world that shows that our current understanding is flawed, we make updated, new ones. And we aren't even done yet; Many of the existing laws of nature that we derived are actually in CONFLICT. They work for what we use them for, but the rules of one can't co-exist with another. Thus the rules themselves are wrong and we know it, we just haven't been able to do better yet.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_field_theory

In the case of the Haruhi universe, stable time loops are possible and time travel is possible. Saying they aren't is claiming that rules are more important than observed data. It is as silly as watching the round Earth from Space, and still claim Earth is flat because the rules said so, and that it is all an optic illusion.

Or in other words...
You are saying what happened in the story can't happen because you think you know how time travel works, which is outrageous. We don't know how time travelling could work. So we don't know the effect of time travel, or what happens when time itself is altered. Applying rules to the unknown is in fact, meaningless, because you have no data other than conjecture. Many SciFi authors have their own interpretations, and you might favour some ideas over others, but none of them are more right than anyone else.

In the case of the Haruhi universe, stable time loops are possible and time travel is possible. Saying they aren't is claiming that rules are more important than observed data.

Alright, I can accept that. It's kind of like the anthropic principle, in a way: "If a certain perception of time must be true for closed loops to exist, then it is true because they exist." The rules are weird, illogical, and counter-intuitive, but they make for a decent story (as long as we accept that they only exist within that story).

Considering we have time travel, pocket dimentions, and quite possibly dimentional travelers (sliders), it is rather hard to pin down just what is going in in Haruhi's universe(s).

It is also difficult to know just what happened in this instance. Was the work altered directly creating an alternate timeline? A new dimention? Did it just change reality for the entire universe without changing the timeline or going into an alternate universe. Where what happen happened in all possible futures. Meaning that Kyon woke up one morning and found the world different and spent three days there before going back in time...after he supposedly corrected the changed world before he woke up, and he fell down the stairs (after being healed from being stabbed), and yet doesn't remember that part at all. So what did happen? Maybe that will be covered later...maybe it won't.

The simple problem is...how do two different versions of the same events take place at the same time and yet both be "true"? And not only does it bring up the question of "how do you save yourself from dying by coming from the future" but also "how do you manage to do something you didn't do?" (namely fall down the stairs to hit your head when you were actualy stabbed in the side).

Alright, I can accept that. It's kind of like the anthropic principle, in a way: "If a certain perception of time must be true for closed loops to exist, then it is true because they exist." The rules are weird, illogical, and counter-intuitive, but they make for a decent story (as long as we accept that they only exist within that story).

But Rules don't need to be logical or intuitive to you; they just need to be TRUE!

Is it "logical" or intuitive" that a liquid you pour into a cup will climb out and escape all by itself if not fully sealed up? Does it make sense that if you spin a liquid in a beaker, it will keep spinning for an eternity by itself?

Well, it doesn't matter that it was counter-intuitive, because it was true. Hence a Nobel prize for Physics was awarded in 1962 to L. D. Landau.

"Scientific Thinking" is all about not holding rules as unbreakable dogmas, but temporary theories that can be improved by more analysis.

One thing that I think we have been forgetting here is that in the Haruhiverse, time is not a continuum, but instead is like a reel of movie film, divided into sequential "frames". Thus, an alteration in any given frame can only affect subsequent frames if it is allowed to propagate to the subsequent frames. As such, entities can be "cut and pasted" between frames to effectively cause them to jump through time.

As such, what I think we are debating here is the issue of whether, if you remove an object from frame "n" (where "n" is any arbitrarily specified time frame), does that necessarily remove it from frame "n+1" (i.e. the immediately following frame, and hence those following)? Can you remove somebody from a "past" frame in the movie while leaving him still intact in every other frame, or does his absence from that frame force him to be absent in every following frame until he is "returned"?

One thing that I think we have been forgetting here is that in the Haruhiverse, time is not a continuum, but instead is like a reel of movie film, divided into sequential "frames". Thus, an alteration in any given frame can only affect subsequent frames if it is allowed to propagate to the subsequent frames. As such, entities can be "cut and pasted" between frames to effectively cause them to jump through time.

As such, what I think we are debating here is the issue of whether, if you remove an object from frame "n" (where "n" is any arbitrarily specified time frame), does that necessarily remove it from frame "n+1" (i.e. the immediately following frame, and hence those following)? Can you remove somebody from a "past" frame in the movie while leaving him still intact in every other frame, or does his absence from that frame force him to be absent in every following frame until he is "returned"?

The Haruhi-verse seem to suggest the answer "Yes and No". To some level, the past can change without influencing the future too much, but it is stated outright later in the books and already hinted in the way the Future people operate, that there is such a thing as a critical mass of changes in the past that completely changes the future. Hence all the safeguards.

Is it "logical" or intuitive" that a liquid you pour into a cup will climb out and escape all by itself if not fully sealed up? Does it make sense that if you spin a liquid in a beaker, it will keep spinning for an eternity by itself?

Well, it doesn't matter that it was counter-intuitive, because it was true. Hence a Nobel prize for Physics was awarded in 1962 to L. D. Landau.

You're looking at things from the wrong angle again. When an author is making something up, you don't get to call it scientific because there have been unexpected scientific discoveries in the real world, and you don't get to use real, irrelevant science as support for fiction.

My issue with the time traveling presented in the Haruhi universe is similar to the exception I'd take with a book about cars that run on orange juice instead of gasoline. As long as we can all agree its fiction and makes no sense, there's no problem. But once you start trying to convince me that orange juice is a legitimate fuel source, and it doesn't need to make sense because there have been instances of things in the real world that don't make sense, there very definitely is a problem. Does "Everything contracts when it gets colder except water, therefore orange juice is a valid fuel source" sound like an acceptable justification to you?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

"Scientific Thinking" is all about not holding rules as unbreakable dogmas, but temporary theories that can be improved by more analysis.

Scientific thinking IS about applying prior observation and rational thought to unexplained phenomena. But this phenomena must be REAL! You know what doesn't make sense? Quantum entanglement. I can't explain it; no one can. But I have to accept it because I live in the world where it exists. In a book, there's no such restriction. I'm fully free to say "this wouldn't work" because it's MADE UP. And here, it does matter that something is counter-intuitive, because it's NOT true.

--

Concerning the movie itself, here's something that occurred to me recently. When Kyon activated the reset program, he completely annihilated the alternate reality and all of its occupants. Does that amount to global genocide, or at least the destruction of people like Haruhi, Itsuki, Mikuru, and Yuki (since arguable the rest of the world remained fairly static between the two realities)? Is there something I'm missing that would make his action not...well, completely morally reprehensible?

thinking IS about applying prior observation and rational thought to unexplained phenomena. But this phenomena must be REAL! You know what doesn't make sense? Quantum entanglement. I can't explain it; no one can. But I have to accept it because I live in the world where it exists. In a book, there's no such restriction. I'm fully free to say "this wouldn't work" because it's MADE UP. And here, it does matter that something is counter-intuitive, because it's NOT true.

Haruhi Suzumiya and Yukiu Nagato are not truly people who exists either.

The point here is that you claim something can't work purely because you don't think it works, with all the "facts" you used as examples not applying to the field of timetravel because there IS NO FACTS on timetravel. Time Travel has not been done in real life, so you can't say you know how it works.

Why do you need something to be intuitive, anyway? You admit yourself that in reality there are many things that are counter-intuitive, but why can't the same happen in the world of fiction?

Isn't it more outrageous to say that everything have to be intuitive?

In the novel series "Discword", the world of the Disc runs on Narativium; essentially, EVERYTHING runs on intuitive. Everything works the way people believe things work, rather than how they ACTUALLY work. Reality got thrown out of the window because only "belief" works. That's how I see you reject the Haruhi world.

You don't believe in Haruhi's Time Travel methods? Fine. But to say your intuition actually matter above the author, when the rest of us in this very thread disagree, obviously showed that not everyone have the same "common sense".

What is "Intuition"? The human brain's way of bypassing rational thought by recognising patterns, and come to a conclusion without spending the time to gather and analyse all the facts. That's why it took so long for humans to realise the Earth is not flat, because "Intuition" said Earth is flat. It is the job of a human to use intuition as little as possible.

Interesting...Haruhi has brought out more or less serious scientific discussion again, just like it use to, before the Dark Times...when the Empire seemed weak from entering an endless recussion of time.

The point here is that you claim something can't work purely because you don't think it works, with all the "facts" you used as examples not applying to the field of timetravel because there IS NO FACTS on timetravel. Time Travel has not been done in real life, so you can't say you know how it works.

You don't believe in Haruhi's Time Travel methods? Fine. But to say your intuition actually matter above the author, when the rest of us in this very thread disagree, obviously showed that not everyone have the same "common sense".

What is "Intuition"? The human brain's way of bypassing rational thought by recognising patterns, and come to a conclusion without spending the time to gather and analyse all the facts. That's why it took so long for humans to realise the Earth is not flat, because "Intuition" said Earth is flat. It is the job of a human to use intuition as little as possible.

As I said in an earlier post, there are widely recognized paradoxes associated with time travel. This isn't my personal intuition; this is understanding (or lack of it) based on universal logic. Intuition that a four-sided triangle can't exist is very different than intuition that all liquids contract when frozen. That's why math is often considered a "purer" field than science; it relies on absolutes, and everything is inferred from everything else.

The nature of cause and effect isn't a scientific issue; it's a logical one. In fact, if there was no such thing, then science itself couldn't exist. Learning couldn't exist. Coherence couldn't exist. Causality is the basis for literally EVERYTHING we know about the universe, and it's not something that can be thrown off as "intuition." It's the most fundamental law there is. That's the reason I object so strongly to this interpretation of time travel, even as a plot device.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ijuinkun

One thing that I think we have been forgetting here is that in the Haruhiverse, time is not a continuum, but instead is like a reel of movie film, divided into sequential "frames". Thus, an alteration in any given frame can only affect subsequent frames if it is allowed to propagate to the subsequent frames. As such, entities can be "cut and pasted" between frames to effectively cause them to jump through time.

As such, what I think we are debating here is the issue of whether, if you remove an object from frame "n" (where "n" is any arbitrarily specified time frame), does that necessarily remove it from frame "n+1" (i.e. the immediately following frame, and hence those following)? Can you remove somebody from a "past" frame in the movie while leaving him still intact in every other frame, or does his absence from that frame force him to be absent in every following frame until he is "returned"?

The problem with Mikuru's explanation, if you interpret it to mean that the frames of time are fixed (except you can draw on them), is that it doesn't agree with how time travel itself is presented. I'm going to assume that each frame is an infinitesimally small section of time; otherwise there are bigger problems to deal with.

First of all, the very act of inserting the time traveler forces modification of the subsequent frames. For causality to be irrelevant, as you all hope to be relying on, then whatever device or operation started the time travelling also is responsible for updating each frame after the insertion point. In other words, it has to create its own causality. A device with that kind of power would grant the user abilities similar to Yuki's, or stronger. But, IIRC, Yuki claims her powers are distinct from the methods time travelers use.

However, time travel seems to be more of inserting the traveler into a frame, letting everything roll along, and pulling the traveler out once the mission is done. In other words, the task of causality is left to the universe. This makes more sense, and it agrees with what's been presented in the anime. In that case, the problem with Mikuru's description is that the frame explanation is functionally no different from a continuum (meaning it doesn't make sense to deny the latter, which she does).

So, in short, removing or inserting a person into a frame definitely forces the subsequent frames to update as well. If it doesn't, then we have yet to see a situation where that's the case. Furthermore, the issue was never "Does an insertion propagate?" We know it does. The real issue is "Can a closed loop exist?"

The trouble is that sometimes the math is incorrect because the values being uses are wrong. This is usually the case when one talks about aspects of the universe that we do not understand and have no way to test at this juncture.

It's substantially different to do math with the wrong values than to do math with the wrong equations. Ignoring the importance of causality amounts to using the wrong equations. Actually, it's worse; its like saying the sum of two numbers is not constant.

We may not understand 99% of the universe, but we all understand causality. The fact that understanding is even an option requires causality to be universally applicable. Just as you couldn't do calculus without addition, you can't have time without causality. Time represents our ordering of the universe, and we couldn't order it if it didn't follow a logical pattern.

It's substantially different to do math with the wrong values than to do math with the wrong equations. Ignoring the importance of causality amounts to using the wrong equations. Actually, it's worse; its like saying the sum of two numbers is not constant.

We may not understand 99% of the universe, but we all understand causality. The fact that understanding is even an option requires causality to be universally applicable. Just as you couldn't do calculus without addition, you can't have time without causality. Time represents our ordering of the universe, and we couldn't order it if it didn't follow a logical pattern.

I still don't get how you don't understand time travel causality. You can't look at it from the perspective of the time stream in general, you have to look at it from the perspective of the time traveler. As long as events are causal from his perspective, logic is satisfied.

Let's take the most obvious example of a "backwards" causality as pertains to time travel, time travel into the past itself. Someone appears in the past "after" having activated his time machine in the future. Now by your explanations, this is clearly impossible, since the cause (activating the machine) happens after the effect (appearing in the past). But it really doesn't. To the perspective of the time traveler and the time machine, the effect came after the cause. In order for time travel to the past to even exist (in fiction, reality, whatever), causality has to be relative to the observer, in this case the traveler. And why not? Einstein already showed that time itself is relative to the observer, after all.